This Month's Winners and Losers: April 2012

By Robert Schork

Winners

Kevin Connolly. The Ossining High School hockey coach was honored by the New York Rangers for his contributions to local youth hockey. Connolly received the Emile Francis Award on the ice at Madison Square Garden during an intermission at a game between the Rangers and Columbus Blue Jackets.

Saw Mill River Parkway Corridor residents. The New York State Department of Transportation has nixed its controversial plans to erect more than 100 microwave towers with cameras and acoustic detection equipment—some as high as 120 feet—along the Saw Mill River Parkway corridor and in its neighboring communities. The towers were intended to help the DOT monitor traffic conditions but were opposed for aesthetic, environmental, and public health concerns.

Yonkers Avon Sales Reps. Boy, do these folks know how to ring a doorbell—their hard work has resulted in Yonkers being Avon’s top-selling district in the nation for 2011. The company showed its appreciation for the district’s 650 reps—who sold more than $5 million in Avon products last year—by honoring them with a party at the Yonkers Public Library.

Losers

Jose Alejandro Munoz-Morocho. The brazen 29-year-old was caught by Ossining police stealing a radio, police uniforms, and other belongings from three police officers’ cars parked outside the police station. He was charged with felony grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, and a misdemeanor for resisting arrest.

Route 6 commuters. According to published reports of state car accident records, a portion of Route 6 in Yorktown and Cortlandt is the county’s most dangerous road, with 67 accidents (and 18 subsequent injuries) reported within a third-mile-long stretch of the road, over the two-year period from 2007-2009.

Elant at Brandywine. The 131-bed nursing home in Briarcliff Manor has received a quality rating of one star (out of a possible five) in six of the past seven reports from the federal government—and earned two stars in the seventh. (Meanwhile, 27 percent of local nursing homes earned a maximum five-star rating.)